


a ghost made flesh

by thefudge



Series: her name is splendor [1]
Category: SKAM (TV)
Genre: F/M, Lust, teenage love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-15
Updated: 2017-04-15
Packaged: 2018-10-19 08:07:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10635759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefudge/pseuds/thefudge
Summary: He wants to raise his eyes and catch her looking, like he did before. He wants to see the deep pool in her eyes, the desire for a beginning.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So, a disclaimer; I am not well-versed in this show. I don't know if I conveyed this budding crush right, but I really wanted to write about them. This partly based on 4.01/4.02, partly AU. I'm making it the first installment in a series because I might add more one-shots, depending on the mood. Hope you enjoy.

i. 

 

Sana is waiting for reverence. A moment of elegance, when people are quiet and the world is blanketed and there is a snow of heartache. She likes the pain in her chest, sometimes. 

She has always been living between the shadow and the wall, in that near space, watching, absorbing.

His dancing is like a prayer, composed of asking and forgiving. He does not dance carelessly, rebelliously, but rather as an offering. He is not defiant. He is innocent joy.

The spell is broken when he sees her and he is embarrassed and – almost – terrified of seeming anything but utterly _cool_. He runs his hands through his unruly hair and smiles guiltily, as if perhaps he danced for her.

 

 

He will sometimes run past her room on the way to the bathroom and he will stop at her door and listen. He’s not eavesdropping; he just wants to hear her presence. He likes to know she’s there, Elias’ mysterious sister, barricaded behind her door, doing whatever she likes.

Whenever Yousef comes over, he thinks “will she be in her room?”

He doesn’t _like_ her that way, he’s just curious.

 

 

On the bus, she smiles at him indulgently, the dimples in her cheek almost extravagant. Whenever her face beams, it is round and perfect like a quince. He _hates_ his own smile, he feels it clumsy and childish on his lips. He looks in the mirror sometimes and sees his uneven teeth and feels horrible, knowing she is a quiet Mona Lisa and he is gauche and unfinished.

“You hate hanging with us, don’t you?” he asks before he can stop himself.

She says nothing, just as Mona Lisa would.

 

 

Sana is climbing up the stairs when she runs into him, and Yousef doesn’t make room for her to pass. It’s an immature impulse but he stands a little in her way, willing her to draw nearer, so their bodies will share warmth.

Her eyes, so dark and luminous, ask him a question. _What do you want?_

He leans forward, towering over her on the step. He rests one hand on the wall next to her head.

 _I want you to talk to me, smile at me,_ he says with his thoughts.

Sana’s breath hitches in her throat. She bites her full lip.

“I have homework to do,” she says with a nervous drawl. She wants the ground to swallow her.

Yousef smiles in a self-deprecating manner, as if he’s only joking. “I – I’m rubbish at that.”

“I didn’t ask for your help,” she snaps without meaning to.

Yousef drops his arm and lets her pass, but he feels a short, electric current as her hand brushes by accident against his shoulder, as if she’s using his body to climb higher.

“Sorry,” she mumbles when she’s reached the landing. “Bad day.”

Yousef chuckles, trying to hold back the impish smile he has never mastered well. He shoves his hands in his pockets, wondering why her presence is such a frightful precipice. Why his palms are wet.  

“It’s all right. Have many of those too,” he replies cheerily.

 

 

He never pictures her naked. Not because he wouldn’t want to _look_ , but because he doesn’t want to undress her like this, in his mind. It’s anticlimactic and false. He lifts the weights imagining what it would be like if _she_ lifted her shirt for _him_. Just the act of stripping slowly – Sana wanting to reveal herself to him – makes his heart pound and he doesn’t need to see skin. Soon he is dizzy with exercise and sweat.

He wants to raise his eyes and catch her _looking_ , like he did before.  

He wants to see the deep pool in her eyes, the desire for a beginning.

 

 

Sana walks like a ghost through the throngs of people, bodies consuming each other, mouths kissing and pouring temporary feelings into temporary throats. The party is raging around her, but she rages quietly within.

Yousef is laughing and talking and having a good time, but the ghost of him is watching her.

He likes this idea that their other halves are following each other.

He doesn’t process this desire into words or even thoughts. It’s just a feeling he has.

His other half is walking into the kitchen now, he is walking towards her, about to slip his hand around her waist and pull her towards him and whisper something in her ear. And he will feel a fluttering in her stomach that will match his own. And her ghost self will not push him away.

The people around them won’t know that their halves are so close, their lips almost touching. No one will know. 

He shakes his head when he’s lying in his own bed that night. He’s an idiot.

 

 

When Yousef stands under the hot shower that morning, he strokes himself to the thought of her, an abstract Sana, a ghost made flesh, a thousand veils falling against his skin, a mark of her dark lipstick on his throat, teenage fantasies, so childish he has to quickly think of something pornographic and violent to stop himself from shuddering.

 

 

Sana walks barefoot in her room and slowly removes her clothes. She thinks, _what if this room were the only room in the universe, and what if only he could watch me? What if no one else could, but him? What if he is watching right now?_

 

 

Yousef lets the balloons fly, even though the boys behind him are crying out in protest. _Why did you do that?_

He watches them float towards the sky, lost forever.

He will grow up someday and this moment will be lost.

Sana calls out for her brother, waving her arm, to give him the house keys.

Yousef darts his head. He runs towards her before he can change his mind, before Elias can say anything.

 “I’ll give them to him.”

Sana wavers, her lips parting like wings.  She sinks a hand in her pocket, arching her elbow when she removes the keys, depositing them defiantly in his palm. Their fingers barely touch.

He clutches the keys like a talisman and smiles again, giving a clumsy part of him to her too. He runs back to the boys, feeling her gaze on his back.

He doesn’t care about what they’ll all say later. He becomes a living body under her gaze. He can truly exist when she draws him out of the ether. Does she feel the same?

Haha, no. Of course _not_. She’s Sana. Her name is splendor. His name is barely an addition.

 

 

Sana treasures the contact of their fingers. As she walks away with the girls, she feels a string of keys between them. He will come up in her prayers tonight, and she will try to remove him from her head and fail. Is this what it feels like to be young? To crave something you do not even know?

 

 

But they do know each other. All ghosts do.


End file.
